Meet Alex Han

In These Times is growing: We’re excited to announce that labor organizer and activist Alex Han has joined us as the new Executive Director.

Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983. He is the host of The Salim Muwakkil show on WVON, Chicago’s historic black radio station, and he wrote the text for the book HAROLD: Photographs from the Harold Washington Years.

As an editor for In These Times for more than 25 years, Salim Muwakkil has forged a reputation as one of the country’s most insightful writers on issues of African-American culture and politics.

Muwakkil started his journalism career as reporter for the Associated Press in Newark, New Jersey shortly before graduating from Rutgers University with a BA in Political Science. He soon moved on to become a copy editor and then managing editor at Muhammad Speaks-Bilalian News, the largest black-owned publication in the country.

Upon moving to Chicago, Muwakkil joined In These Times’ staff and became a contributing columnist to both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Muwakkil has also written for the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Progressive, Newsday, Cineaste, Chicago Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, Z Magazine, the Toronto Star, Emerge Magazine, The Black Scholar, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Utne Reader.

Muwakkil is a frequent contributor to “Chicago Tonight” and “Beyond the Beltway,” two Chicago-based public affairs programs.

Muwakkil has won a variety of journalism awards including the “Top Ten Media Heroes of 1994,” from the Institute of Alternative Journalism, the “Black Rose Achievement Award for 1997,” from the League of Black Women, the 2001 Studs Terkel Award for Journalistic Excellence from the Chicago-based Community Media Workshop and the 2004 Lillian Award for Excellence in Journalism, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

He was also a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute.

In his spare time, Muwakkil serves as a board member for the Progressive Media Project and the Chicago-based Public Square. He has been a faculty member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest’s Urban Studies Program, and an adjunct professor at Columbia College, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Viewpoint
Al Qaeda Plays the Malcolm Card
Viewpoint
Proud of Obama … For Now
Viewpoint
An Exemplar of Reconciliation
Viewpoint
The War We Won’t Talk About
Viewpoint
Getting Messy With Jesse Helps Obama
Viewpoint
Chicago’s Olympic Dreams Undeserved
Viewpoint
Israel’s Openly Secret Nukes
Viewpoint
The Vendetta Against Black Men
Viewpoint
A Speech Even Condi Could Love
Viewpoint
The Man or the Movement
Viewpoint
How Black is Obama?
Viewpoint
Nas: Whose Word Is This?
Viewpoint
Come on Cosby, Stop Hatin’
Cosby makes blanket indictments of an entire class of black people and offers only exhortations from the sidelines
Viewpoint
Harold Washington Remembered
Washington's candidacy forged political unity among Chicago's notoriously fractious black community and helped bring the city's feuding Latino groups (including Mexicans and Puerto Ricans) together
Viewpoint
Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy
Around the country, black males face a criminal justice system that incarcerates them more than eight times the rate of whites
Viewpoint
Smearing Israel’s Critics
Former DePaul professor Finkelstein joins a growing list of academics censored for criticizing the Holy Land's foreign policy
Viewpoint
The Counterproductive War on Gangs
The conclusion of the report, "Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies," persuasively argues that punitive policies of policing that specifically target gangs increase rather than decrease gang violence
Viewpoint
The Squandering of Obama
Political masterminds have transformed the candidate from a political visionary into an electoral product like every other presidential aspirant
Viewpoint
Entrapping Inflated Threats
Terrorist "plots" exposed by the administration have been notable for their lack of credible threat and the whiff of political opportunism
Viewpoint
Entrapping Inflated Threats
Was the terrorist plot to blow up JFK Airport a threat or a joke?
Viewpoint
Blaming Hip-Hop for Imus
Instead of blaming rappers for vulgarity, social resources should be channeled to combat the conditions that create those lyrics
Viewpoint
Globalism with Combat Boots
Viewpoint
Slavery and the State of Denial
Viewpoint
For Israel’s Sake
Viewpoint
Baracks Black Dilemma
Viewpoint
The Caracas Consensus
Viewpoint
The CBC and Speaker Pelosi
Progressive members of the Congresssional Black Caucus poised to chair committees, meanwhile "Blue Dog" and "New" Democrats pulling the party to the center.
Viewpoint
Farrakhan Steps Back
Farrakhan's failing health causes the Nation of Islam to look to the future.
Viewpoint
The Neocons Lexicon
Republican term "Islamofacism" conflates the war on terro as a battle between the Enlightenment and Theocracy.
Viewpoint
Corporal Punishments Hidden Costs
Corporal punishment of children linked to later interpersonal violence.
Viewpoint
The Reparations Bandwagon
Hurricane Katrina opens eyes to the need for reparations to repair the race/class divide.
Viewpoint
Police Torture and the Need for Repair
Special prosecutors Edward Egan and Robert Boyle report that Chicago Police led by Commander Jon Burge likely tortured dozens.
Viewpoint
A Terrifying Distraction
Government entrapment leads to the unlawful arrest of seven Hatian men falsely accused of terrorist actvity.
Viewpoint
The Persecution of the American Taliban?
John Walker Lindh was misunderstood and mislabeled as an "American Taliban."
Viewpoint
Black Politics Paradigm Paradox
Viewpoint
Diplomatic Hypocrisy in the Middle East
Viewpoint
Science: The Drug Wars Latest Victim
Viewpoint
Black Men: The Crisis Continues
Viewpoint
The Israel Lobby and its Discontents
Viewpoint
The Battle for Fred Hampton Way
Viewpoint
The Kanye West Effect
Viewpoint
Islam vs. the West: Clashing Sensibilities
Viewpoint
Black History Month Matters
Viewpoint
Reflections on Tookie’s Execution
Viewpoint
What’s the 411 on 9/11?
Viewpoint
Torture in the Homeland
Viewpoint
Jump-Starting a Movement
Viewpoint
Give Me Cognitive Liberty
1 2 3 4